


Grand Theft Autumn

by semi_sweet



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Attempted Suicide, Drugs, F/F, Femslash, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Genderswap, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Internalised Homophobia, Mental Illness, Sexism, Slut Shaming, all they do is knock you up and treat you like shit, am I salty? You bet i am, and if nobody else is gonna write em for me i'll write em myself, any more tags and it gets spoiler-y, but boye is this unnecessarily dramatic, fgs js read about some good lesbians being gay together, finally some good fucking fanny, high-school kids, i love girls, let alone two??, men are dicks, men don't deserve women if we're honest, nobody likes them, non-canon ages difference, okay?, pete is the same age as patrick, petra's angry, titties for all, which is why pete gets the girl, who wants dicks?, why am i tagging this nobody is gonna read it bc you rats hate women for some damn reason
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-06-27 08:56:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15682140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semi_sweet/pseuds/semi_sweet
Summary: Petra decides men ain't shit. Trick is somewhat inclined to agree.





	1. He's Well Hung and I Am Hanging On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Das_verlorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Das_verlorene_Kind/gifts).



> thanks to pands for reassuring me that this isn't complete horseshit
> 
> happy very belated birthday kindchen! I hope this is alright lol

It was bad. It was always bad, but this time it was just that much worse that she didn’t want to leave her bedroom; no, actually, the comfort of her bed, let alone the house. She pulled the duvet further over hear head, blocking out what little light was bleeding through from behind the blackout blinds. She didn’t want to see or be seen, she wanted to be left here, alone, safely kept away from anybody she might harm and she harmed everybody she came in contact with. She was toxic and she knew it, always too clingy, always too desperate, the world would be better off without her. 

“Petra sweetie, time for school!” Petra grumbled loudly from inside her fortress, her armour, her shield to protect the world from her. Did that make it a cage? A cage was where she belonged, where she was best off, where she wouldn’t annoy everybody with her bad mood, where she wouldn’t hold people back and make them feel guilty for things that weren’t their fault because she didn’t have her own fucking feelings under control, because she was so pathetically desperate for attention, for validation because she was fucking broken.

“Oh, chicken, is it that time again?”

Yes. Of course it was. What the fuck else would it be?! Always blame it on that, that way there was no need to admit that there may be another problem here. How she hated it. Just because she was simultaneously bleeding from her vagina, that didn’t make her emotional pain any less significant. She’d have to live with this for a week every month until she was in her forties now. Could she do that? Fuck, she wasn’t sure she could. 

“Do you want me to call in sick for you? I can do that if you’d like to stay home…” Yes, actually. Petra would very much like that, she’d very much like for her mother to coddle her and look after her and try at least to make her feel worthy of attention but… but. Her band needed her. She’d committed to this now, she had to go through with it. Petra didn’t want to, but she managed to roll out of bed, tattered band shirt hanging loosely from her slim frame, legs bare and unshaven. She didn’t look in the mirror as she plucked the baggiest, least sexy pair of knickers out of the drawer, grabbed the first bra she could reach, slung some black shirt or other over her arm and picked up the nearest pair of trousers from her rather filthy-looking carpet. 

The shower was cold to combat the summer heat, the hair-dryer was hot to shake off the cold sticking to the back of her neck where her hair was starting to grow too long again. Maybe she could get Mick to cut it for her next time they met. She stared at her reflection in the dirty bathroom mirror, utterly emotionless for fear of her expression betraying her and letting the world know she was pretty much dying on the inside. She’d like to say she trained long and hard to obtain this blank stance, but the truth of the matter was that Petra was just cursed with a resting bitch face, blamed on a combination of her hooded lids, her straight pout and way too heavy brows she couldn’t be bothered to pluck half the time. She grabbed her dad’s razor lying beside the sink and did her best to remove the hairs connecting in the centre and ruining any chance of beauty she had. A fucking monobrow. As if she wasn’t already cursed enough. 

Her makeup routine consisted of dark shadow messily smeared on her top lid, completed with black kohl liner covering most of the bottom and a hint of mascara if she was feeling frisky, which, today, she wasn’t.

Her converse weren’t exactly functional anymore. Okay, look, she knew Converse weren’t ever appropriate footwear in rainy weather, but as long as the sole was somewhat whole, it was enough for her feet to stay dry until she got to school. Those days were long gone, though, a gaping hole at the bottom of the right shoe letting in all the water and dirt mother nature had to throw at her. Her mother called it idiocy, she called it love. Her first pair of cool shoes. She’d been so happy to get them. She wasn’t going to part with them willingly. 

The good thing about the rain was, it hid the sweat. The heat hadn’t subsided with the sudden downpour; if anything, it had become more unbearable, it was now clinging to the inside of her lungs and thickening the air around her. Miss Xo could open all the windows she liked, the humidity wasn’t leaving any time soon. 

Petra blankly stared at the blackboard, white markings spelling out the words that should be scrawled onto the pages of her book, but somehow she couldn’t make her hand copy them down. Chris was sniffing into a tissue next to her. Dumb fuck had caught the flu, god knows where. Petra had told him to keep his distance, they didn’t need the whole band falling ill a day before prom, this might be their best publicity yet. They’d played shows before, sure, in friend’s mothers’ basements; small, dark, stinking rooms filled to the brim with wasted kids lazily screaming the wrong words to songs they didn’t know, but never anything in front of people who hadn’t been forced to listen to their demo tape in Petra’s search for validation she wasn’t getting from record companies. 

It was safe to say she was somewhat nervous. Even now, fidgeting the pen in her right hand as she chewed the nails on her left. A bad habit. She didn’t know if her anxiety was making her depression worse or if her depression was making her anxiety worse, all she knew was they’d both arrived at exactly the wrong fucking time and their collision was almost unbearable. 

Her books were in her bag before the bell had even stopped ringing, hastily thrown in, crumpling the paper already inside. She hoped it wasn’t anything important. Then again, did she own any truly important documents? 

Petra hurled her bass over her shoulder, nearly smacking Chris square in the face, but his complaint about it was cut off by the look of murder she shot him over her shoulder. They were only allowed to practice for an hour until they’d be chucked out in favour of the fucking cheerleading team in their sluttish short skirts and their ditzy hair-dos, preppy fucking bitches that would spit in her face and call her a dyke first chance they got. She knew from experience, condemned to the corner of the locker room before and after PE, accusations of prevert and creep thrown at her if her eyes happened to land on one of them getting changed. 

They didn’t understand they were all dumb bitches to her, ugly, preppy girls that would never amount to anything other than marrying some jocked-up fuckwit and spitting out his equally ugly babies for him that would only go on to pelt rocks at her windows. She couldn’t care less about any of them.

The gym was a much kinder place without the shrill sound of a whistle forcing Petra into doing some dumb shit on the bars because that’s what girls did, girls didn’t play football, “Put that down right now!” The decorations were already up, the disco ball was hanging from the ceiling, surrounded by colourful streamers. The walls were half-covered in dark green cloth, the rest of which was lying next to the door, waiting to transform the rest of the gym into a ballroom of sorts. 

Petra climbed up onto the stage, her bass hanging off her shoulders. The neck slammed against one of the steel beams as she jumped up, sending a loud crack echoing around the room. Adam was already sat behind his drums as she was still plugging it in. In all honesty, she didn’t know the first thing about bass, it only had four strings so it must be easier than guitar, that had been her logic when picking her instrument. She’d just seen Axl rose in catchers guards and thought I wanna do that. Somehow, she’d been good enough for this little group. 

Chris was tuning his guitar carefully, making sure it was perfect, not a semitone off. Petra knew that was how it was supposed to be, treated with respect and detail and love, but she wanted to get on with it, wanted to make her fingers bleed on the strings, to scream her throat raw and maybe, if things went really well, launch herself off the stage head-first and crack her head open like an egg. The closest she could get to trepanation, an attempt to lock those demons out of their cage. They couldn’t fucking stay there, they weren’t even paying rent.

“Can you just fucking get on with it?! God damn it, dude, nobody’s listening!”

Her jaw was clenched, the tension inside her translating perfectly throughout her body as she lazily hammered against the wrong strings, playing the wrong runs, off-key and out of tune. She knew Adam’s judgemental stare was fixed on her, a lecture was surely to follow the rehearsal, but she didn’t care, she had no patience for men and their fucking patronising tone right now. Fuck, they could all fall off the face of the Earth as far as she was concerned. 

The boys didn’t speak a word to her, only ever telling each other what their next song was gonna be, letting Petra pick it up from her spot on the left corner of the stage. It was just going through the motions for her. She didn’t have anything to refine like Chris and Adam did, this was all she could do, her success was keeping time, she didn’t care for the details. Nobody would notice, too drunk to care. Yes, yes, of course, they were all small, pure babies who’d never touched a drop of alcohol, certainly those vodka bottles that would be lined up along the football pitch won’t have been put there by 17-year-olds chasing that buzz that made them feel like the adults they were too eager to grow into. 

Not Petra. Frankly, adulthood sounded like hell, imagine all the pressure she already had, put with the added charm of actual responsibilities. Fuck, just thinking about it made her want to impale herself on one of those steel beams below her feet. 

It wouldn’t matter, nobody would miss her. Her mum would live, she had two other beautiful, perfect children who didn’t have to get picked up from the police station or cost her her last nerves when they forgot to mention they wouldn’t come home tonight. 

“Petra! PETRA!” Shit! She cursed loudly as the steel whipped across her fingers, dragging its sharp edges over her skin and leaving a mark in its wake. She wanted to cry. Not because it hurt, fuck, she’d had worse injuries, but because on top of all else… this. The whole world was against her. 

“Fucking slow down, girl! God, you’re awful, are you on your period or something?” 

“Mind your own fucking business, Chris,” she snapped, her words running ahead of her. Not that he didn’t fucking deserve them. She just wasn’t in the mood for diplomacy. She was in the mood for sitting in her room listening to the new Green Day album on full volume for the rest of the day, steadily destroying her hearing so she wouldn’t have to listen to this sort of bullshit again.

Actually, that sounded like quite the plan. 

“You know what? Forget it. You’re not fucking playing properly, anyway.” She was, she was the only one of them who was playing properly, for fuck’s sake! She wasn’t bothering with some technicality or whatever, she just wanted it to feel right, she just wanted to feel. 

“Come on, Adam, we’re moving to my place. Petra can come when she’s stopped PMSing.” She bit her tongue so hard she could taste iron on it, her senses finally catching up with her just as the Ibuprofen stopped working. Fuck, she needed to get home to take another one before she ended up writhing in pain in the middle of school.

The door shut with a loud bang. Petra looked up from the torn bass string hanging limply from the instrument, useless, lifeless, pointless. Past its prime. Ready to be thrown away. The gym was - as expected - empty, the bleachers pushed back against the wall, basketball hoops up against the ceiling, out of the way for the big day tomorrow. Streamers hung off the climbing racks on the brightly decorated walls, the disco ball had been put in place but it looked sad without technicolour lights glinting in its reflection. The only other person in the room with her was sitting about six feet away from the stage, cross-legged on the floor, chemistry book balanced in her lap, dirty blonde hair falling over her eyes and concealing half her face, the other half was hidden by a lopsided trucker cap. A smile found itself onto Petra’s face as she propped her bass against an amp and hopped off the stage.

“What’re you doing here?” Trick didn’t look up from the notes she definitely wasn’t studying so much as blankly staring at so she could pretend she was actually being productive.

“Studying. Dumbass.” Petra chuckled to herself as she sunk to the floor in front of Trick who barely glanced up to her. 

“Will you be coming tomorrow?” 

“Where?”

“Prom, dumbass.”

“Oh”, Trick’s voice caught, barely, but still enough for Petra to notice. Fuck, how she hated him, she could give her so much better… “Sure, yeah. I think. I’d have to ask Michael.” Petra’s gut clenched, even though she’d known it was coming. Still. 

“He doesn’t fucking own you, Trick…” Her bloody was all but boiling, clenched fist pressed into the PVC of the gym floor so it wouldn’t meet something else, so she wouldn’t hurt herself again. Trick had been so worried last time. 

“No, I- I know but he’s my boyfriend so… like, I should go to prom with my boyfriend, right?” Petra swore to God, every time their eyes met her heart stopped. One day she’d die of it, she was certain, drowned to death in baby blues and fuck, what a way to go. 

She had to restrain herself from reaching out and stroking over Trick’s lap. 

“You can do whatever you want… you don’t… have to go with him, you know…” She knew she was good at puppy eyes, if there was one skill she’d actually perfected, it was that. Unfortunately, for those to work, you usually needed somebody to look into them and it seemed like Trick was doing everything but that. Petra’s eyes were fixed on her mouth as her bottom lip, her plump, pink bottom lip, caught between her teeth, turning white under the pressure of them and Petra caught herself wishing - not for the first time - that is was hers doing that. Her fingers twitched, desperate to stroke over that lip. 

She couldn’t. As far as she knew, Trick’s reaction would be no different to the ones she was so used to, biting words more painful than fists - she wished she was a dude instead, she could easily take the fists - and the rejection she’d become so used to, but not from Trick. She wouldn’t be able to handle it coming from Trick. This was better than nothing. She told herself that all day as she sat lost in her own thoughts, staring at the hours ticking by on the clock hanging over the blackboard in every classroom. She told herself that every night, enveloped in darkness as she tried to slip into the sleep she craved so desperately, or as her saliva-coated fingers made their way into her pants. Then it was usually that fucking lip she thought of, those blue eyes looking up at her. Fuck, how she dreamed of it.

It had to stay that way. A dream. The price she’d pay wasn’t worth the risk of it. She told herself that. Maybe someday she’d believe it. 

“I’ve gotta get home,” Trick murmured to herself, stuffing the book she hadn’t been reading in her rucksack. She wasn’t looking at Petra, instead focussed on what she was doing very, very carefully. Petra wondered if she’d already said too much and somehow Trick could tell she was a fucking homo trying to get in her pants. And heart, but somehow, that part never mattered to anyone. 

Petra knew she shouldn’t run after her, but she did it anyway. Electric shocks coursed through her body as she gripped onto Trick’s arm, the contact only a fraction of what she craved but so much more than she could dream of. Trick glanced at her from beneath the brim of her cap. It was the camo trucker hat today, grossly mismatched with the bright red of her t-shirt and her tattered, baggy jeans, so very different from Petra’s skinny black trousers. 

“I think you should go either way,” she started another attempt to get her to come. She couldn’t play without her best friend there! What if something went wrong? What if she needed her? Besides, her dress was gorgeous, she couldn’t allow for Trick to not see her in it. Petra wasn’t sure what she’d expected, maybe for Trick to agree with her, to smile and nod and look her deep in the eye and realize she didn’t need her deadbeat boyfriend who Petra just knew was fucking one of the cheerleading whores. 

What Trick did do was pull away, uncomfortably re-claiming her arm and tugging her shoulders up to her ears, nestling further into the coat it was too fucking hot for her to be wearing. 

“I’ll think about it, Weasel,” she muttered, not sparing her a second glance as she sloped off to her bus stop, leaving Petra standing around in the middle of the yard, looking like a dumbass as the piss-warm rain soaked through her clothes. A lot less romantic than The Notebook.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is doing so much better than I had anticipated thank you???? Oh wow. I hope you like this.

Technicolour lights blinded every thought in Petra’s mind, drowning her consciousness in a lucid high that had never been induced. She’d tried E once. She hadn’t liked it. She wasn’t yet sure how she felt about this, the hint of a migraine tugging at her temple, she pushed it away again and again, focussed instead on the vibration of steel beneath her fingertips. Sometimes, in these moments where everything was so surreal she was teetering on the edge of sanity’s blade, she cursed her past self for not sticking with guitar, she sharp tear of that high E-string breaking into her skin if she just sliced the tip along it hard enough, cutting the blade deep before she could fall off either end. 

 

Neither was desirable, the obsessive, all-encompassing high of bad decisions and twilight regrets as shattering as the suffocating low of the space between her mattress and her blanket, the space filled with bad air and worse thoughts. Both were terrifying. Petra would rather choose the blade.

 

A dramatic description of prom night, maybe, but one fitting to describe the mindset of a teenage girl struggling to get through life because she wasn’t like the others and well aware of it, too. She didn’t have a word for it yet, though she would later find out she was bipolar. Manic depressive, as the late great Carrie Fisher would say, not to be compared with a bisexual polar bear. But yes, Petra Wentz was, in fact, bipolar. You see, at the time she merely thought she was a freak, a burden to anybody and everybody including herself, not worthy of anybody’s time or love, of course, that didn’t stop her from craving it or falling in it. And, oh, that everlasting torture when you are hopelessly in love with who you think is the most wonderful person ever to grace the universe, yet convince yourself you are unworthy of their love. Petra was, of course, not unworthy. But try telling a teenage girl that.

 

Her heart was heavy, making the colours blur into one another as she lost her mind in the music, tugging at strings without knowing if they were the right ones, if her left hand was joining in, if she was on time. Her attention - or what little of it she had left - was devoted solely to singling out a set of lake-blue eyes beneath a ratty, straight fringe. She cut it herself. Petra had seen her do it once after she’d got annoyed by how it hung in her eyes all the time, making it even harder for her to see than it already was. Her bottom lip had been caught between her teeth as she went cross-eyed, trying to see where she was cutting without a mirror, the scissors messily snip-snip-snipping away to reveal a forehead covered in spots. 

 

Needless to say, Petra’s heart had broken free of its constraining ribcage and hurled itself at the dumb girl sitting on the bed, cutting her own hair like a complete idiot.  

 

There were so many blondes. Natural dark blondes, gold blondes, peroxide blondes, their personality as watered-down and fake as the extensions clipped onto their head as they clung onto their beefy boyfriends with jaws even more chiselled than Petra’s own. Ditzy barbies with frilly frocks that barely covered their skinny arses to show off carefully waxed legs and, if they jumped too high or bent over too far, their not-expensive lingerie they were gonna let their jock-ass dicks of boyfriends tear off by the end of the night. And they called her the whore. 

  
Trick wouldn’t wear anything like that, she was certain of it, even in the haze of semi-consciousness she wasn’t so sure hadn’t been induced by the pills she’d taken before. She could have sworn they weren’t out of date yet, the tiny, fading imprint on the white carboard box that sat at the bottom of her rucksack not making her any the wiser, but she could have sworn…

  
When you love somebody, or, rather, have a crush on somebody, half the time you can’t remember why. The weight of your unrequited love you’re sure will make you crumble doesn’t seem worth it, really, every time they don’t reply to your texts, every time they’re spending time with somebody they love who clearly isn’t you whilst you sit in solitude’s silence wondering how, how, how you could ever expect to be loved. You’ll almost convince yourself it isn’t worth it until your phone buzzes and displays their name, until you spot them at the other end of the courtyard at school, lounging against a tree, frantically trying to finish the homework they’d forgotten about, until you catch their smell, see their photo, an ad for their favourite biscuit or their boyfriend standing at the back of the room you’re playing a concert in.  

  
Prom.

  
If Michael was here, then… then, surely, Trick wouldn’t be far, right? 

  
She floundered, her finger slipping on the fretboard, missing her cue and she’d have burned red if she were the type to blush as she tried to catch up with Adam’s syncopated rhythm.    
Vigilant eyes scanned the room over and over again as Petra turned into a computer programmed to pick just one face out of the crowd and she was sure she could. If she were an astronaut walking among the stars, she was certain she’d be able to look down and find her.    
But Petra wasn’t an astronaut, and this wasn’t the universe and Trick wasn’t there. 

  
She tried to convince herself she was merely in the bathroom or out catching some air, she was surely here, she’d said she’d as Michael, there was no way she wasn’t here, she had to be here!    
She didn’t know Michael, big, tall, handsome Michael, so much more than she could ever be, but she sure as hell knew of him, the string of lovers attached to his name trailing behind him in the dirt of the wasteland he left in his wake as he destroyed teenage girl after teenage girl, always in love with every one of them until he was bored of her voice and her face, bored of her tits and her cunt and the way she sucked his cock. 

  
Petra’s bass twanged in time with her heart at the thought of Trick on her knees for him. Did he fuck her well? Did he make her come screaming his name?

  
It didn’t matter. Not then, not as she watched the way he grinded against the nearest peroxide slut, surely getting off at the feeling of her arse against his puny, shrivelled dick. Her jaw clenched, hard, so hard she might just break a tooth if he started feeling her up. Everybody knew he was a man whore. Part of her wanted to blame Trick for believing the spoon-fed, processed lies he used every time. 

  
She wasn’t sure whether the blood on her tongue was real in the same way she wasn’t sure whether she was plummeting towards insanity or time really had slowed down. She just knew the euphoria spilling into her brain was the cruellest thing she could feel in that instance, just before the guilt of it came crashing down around her, drowning her like a tidal wave after the sea had been dragged out. She’d deal with her bandmates later. For now, she had to follow Trick.    
Petra pushed, shoved and stumbled her way through the muttering crowd, trying to ignore the laughs and judgmental looks and disgusted sneers, they didn’t matter, they didn’t fucking matter. Nothing mattered.

  
She found her in the toilets, dimly lit and stinking, the distinct smell of alcohol vomit burning her sinuses. The sniffing stopped the second the door opened, the confirmation she needed that behind the locked stall door at the far end, Trick was gathering up the fragments of a broken heart. 

  
Petra paced towards it, slowly, carefully, giving her time to yell at her, to tell her to fuck off and leave her alone, but she reached the grey, plastic door and leaned as close to it as she dared to without contracting some awful disease that was clinging to the stall. 

  
“Tricky?” She only sounded like this around her, the fire and anger that stirred within her most of the time dispelled by soft, blue eyes and a gentle smile. Even when she couldn’t see them.    
She was answered by a sniff and a choked sob. Euphoria, guilt, heartbreak.

  
“I’m f-fine. Y-you can… you d-don’t have to… I’ll b-b-be right out, you should… should be with, with, with y-your ban-n-d.” She couldn’t stop crying and Petra swore she would murder him. She’d let her knuckles collide with his face until they were raw and he was begging her to stop, until he admitted his wrongdoings, until he told the world what a cunt he was and then she’d wrap her hands around his throat and choke the life out of him.

  
“They don’t need me, Trick, you do. You’re more important to me.” She bit her tongue too late, the words slipping past her lips like a stream. Followed by silence.

  
It took another 20 seconds before Petra could breathe out at the click of a lock. Trick slithered out, her dress trailing through the filth on the floor, the tips of her converse poking out from below the dusty green hem on every step and Petra smiled to herself because it looked so decidedly uncool it was cute. She could tell Trick had put effort into it, she’d tied her hair back, carefully painted her eyelids the colour of her dress and her lips were coated with a clear shimmer Petra all but wanted to taste for herself. 

 

No, not now. This wasn’t about her.

 

Black tear stains streaked Trick’s face, her mascara far from waterproof, and her eyes were red and puffy and Petra focussed on those rather than the awful, awful bow on her waist. 

 

Trick liked physical contact, always had done for as long as Petra could remember, stealing cuddles and touches wherever she could, always sticking as close to people as possible, desperate to share somebody’s body heat. Petra cupped her cheek with her right hand, her skin greasy beneath her palm because she was a seventeen-year-old girl and puberty was a fucking bitch. Her thumb stroked alone Trick’s face, a soothing rhythm she hoped would do its job of calming her down. Her shoulders were still heaving with sobs, she wouldn’t look Petra in the eye, instead stared at the floor to their feet like it held the cure to her heartbreak.

 

She leaned into her touch eventually, her forehead resting on Petra’s shoulder as her sobs quietened and nothing but the occasional sniffle gave away her sadness. Petra couldn’t help but press a kiss to the crown of her head as she wrapped an arm around her back and held her close, safely, lovingly, caringly. So many words sat at the back of her throat, ready to blurt out in a cacophony of hateful spite and loving comfort, all she needed to convince her to leave him, to come with her. 

 

She choked them down.

 

They slid to the bathroom floor, sitting on the filthy tiles, Trick’s ugly, green dress scrunched up around her ankles, such a vile contrast to the pink highlights on Petra’s underskirt, shadowed by the black tull that was at that point sporting so many holes she wasn’t sure she could even wear it as a fashion statement anymore. 

 

“I just… feel so fucking dumb, y’know?” Trick’s voice was heavy and sticky as she talked through her snotty nose, “I mean I… I fucking… I should have known he’s like this, I just, I feel… he’s done this before! I should have known…” Petra was inclined to agree. She was inclined to agree that it was stupid to ever trust him, to believe him and his dumbass lies. She couldn’t tell Trick that, obviously, so she kept her smug words to herself, the  _ I told you so _ unspoken because she never actually did. 

 

“It’s not your fault, Trick, babe, he’s a fucking dick, it’s not your fault”, and other, similar words fell from her lips, rattling down on Trick like summer rain, just to make sure she knew, this wasn’t her fault, she wasn’t the dumbass here, even though she was. Partly. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because it was over and done now and she’d finally, finally leave him.

 

“I can’t leave him.” The words cut like ice through her, stabbing every butterfly inside her one by one by one. It must have made Petra freeze up on the outside, too, because when Trick tried to pry herself out of her grasp, she realized she was rigid, frozen solid.   


“Weasel, please… let me go, you’re.. Hurting me…” The words made her snap out of it, terrified of causing her any pain in any sort of way. Trick awkwardly hugged her arm, still not looking at Petra, still staring at the grey tiles. 

 

“You have to leave him!” She spurted out, filter discarded in favour of harsh honesty, “he cheated Trick! He’ll do it again, he’s a total prick!”She bit her lip, awkwardly shifting around on the floor, still not fucking  _ looking _ ! “Trick, you have to! He doesn’t fucking deserve you, you can do so so much better, like-”  _ me _ .

 

She cut her sentence off before she could get herself into even more trouble than she was already in anyway. Trick just shook her head, a single tear rolled off her lid and dropped onto the floor. 

 

“I can’t, Petra, I’m… I can’t leave him, he… he…” Her gaze was locked on Trick’s lips, like she could tempt the answers out of them. She was searching for words, her mouth silently trying them out, rolling them over her tongue before deciding they weren’t good enough and Petra just  _ stared _ . 

 

Eventually, she sniffed, one last time, sat back, her head tipped so her throat was on display and fuck, Petra wanted her so so badly…

 

Trick wiped a hand over her face, smudging the black streaks even more, ruining her makeup completely. Expectantly, Petra awaited the reply, the reason she couldn’t leave him, the deep, dark secret of her traded soul or whatever excuse she was about to come up with. Petra had all the disputes ready, all the countrepoints lined up perfectly, ready to de-construct this relationship brick by boring brick. 

 

Trick shrugged and smiled a small, sad smile, her eyes finally meeting Petra’s. 

 

“Y’know… it’s, it’s whatever, dude.” 

 

All she could do was slump.

 

The not-answer was so cutting, so damaging, Trick was so deeply into this dude she didn’t even need to justify this… And all her disputes disappeared one by one, vanishing into nothingness as she tried to grapple for them.

 

Trick stood up, rubber soles of her converse squeaking on the wet tile. She thanked Petra, at least Petra thought she did, and walked off, the door clicking shut behind her. Petra: Alone, on the floor of her high school bathroom, teetering between anger and tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos if u want, my tumblr ia scmi-sweet uwu


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey... uhm... listen I can explain
> 
> look I've had a lot going on, both physically and mentally, and I've honestly just not had the energy to write but i'm trying my best to get shit on track so hopefully we'll be back to more or less regular updates now. 
> 
> Hope you still enjoy this even with the nearly two-month gap....

Petra knew what to do. It took a few hours for the dull grey the conversation with Trick had painted her reality to fade into saturation, she wouldn’t deny that, yes, she’d been upset, frustrated, maybe even angry, but that didn’t matter. Petra decided then, that moment the first colours became visible in her periphery view, that this wasn’t about her, this couldn’t be about her. What she wanted, what she craved with every inch of her body and soul, had to be put aside in order to prevent it from fracturing and breaking, crumbling away between her fingers. Who was she to presume she even deserved it, what she wanted? Wasn’t that just her entitlement talking? 

 

Petra knew what to do. It worked for John fucking Cusack, it would work for her, she could totally be charming and personable and paint a smile over heartbreak, she could do that! She was confident about it - mixtape firmly lodged into the boom box sitting snugly on the passenger seat, Joel Madden helping her feel like she owned the familiar streets she navigated her dad’s old Toyota along, bar by bar reminding her that her love was complicated, over-rated, whatever. 

 

She’d decided - rather consciously - that she was perfectly happy on her own, thank you very much. Who needed romance? Wasn’t it just some dumb societal expectation thrust upon teens that was printed onto the synapses of their brains until is inevitably destroyed any chance at happiness in adult life due to their need to bind themselves to one single person? No thank you. Petra could do without any of that. 

 

That realisation alone, the conscious decision of voting against any sort of… romance, love, whatever, changed her. It sounded dumb and cheesy, who had an epiphany in real life? Epiphanies were nothing more than a plot device, then again, what was there to suggest Petra wasn’t a character in a shitty romance novel? Better than erotica, she supposed. She just prayed her author was finally out of her moping phase and ready to become the strong, independent woman she was going to channel right into Petra. Yes, that was it. Strong, independent woman. She didn’t have anything to lose here, she could demonstrate any sort of affection in overly-grandiose gestures because she had nothing at all to lose.

 

The John-Cusack-Joel-Madden confidence dwindled somewhat when the white slats of the Stumph’s Glenview home came into view. Or, more accurately, Trick’s mum’s Glenview home, a fierce, independent woman who made more money than both Trick’s father and step-father ever did. She was painfully aware of that fact when she picked up the gravel that could well scratch the living daylights out of her pristine window, or somehow dirty the flawless wood of the facade. Suddenly her mismatched converse made her feel stupid rather than quirky.

 

She glanced over the other windows in sight, double-checking that nobody was watching her (it would honestly freak her out quite a bit on top of getting her into trouble) and having confirmed for herself that she was not, in fact, subject to anybody’s eagle-eyed stare, she drew her arm back, ready to throw the tiny stones against Trick’s window and have her stupid 80s movie moment just like she’d always-

 

“Petra Wentz!” Petra, startled to terrified, quickly dropped her hand to rest behind her back, desperately trying to hide the damage she was about to do to the house. Patricia Stumph - the adult Patricia Stumph, the slender, sharp-faced woman who might well slip you cyanide for breaking her pansies - had appeared at the front door, glaring at Petra through the dim light pouring from the hallway. She’d looked after Petra a lot, more than anybody would be expected to look after a kid that wasn’t their own, and she’d always been kind to her, but somehow that didn’t make her any less intimidating when she was angry. 

 

“I- I’m sorry, I just… I wanted…”

 

“Mom?” Petra ignored the fuzzy feeling in her belly when Trick emerged, wrapped in her too-big pyjamas and lazily rubbing her tires eyes with her too-long sleeves, but she couldn’t stop the grin from splitting her face. Trick squinted at her from behind her ratty fringe, her eyes failing her without the help of her red-framed glasses. 

 

“Weasel?” she croaked, her voice heavy with sleep as she wrapped her arms around her body and shuffled forward onto the porch. “What the…. hell are you doing here?” Petra did her best to subtly pull her pleated skirt lower to cover at least a little more of her fishnet-clad thighs, feeling somewhat judged under Patricia Stump the Older’s gaze. 

 

“I uh… I came to… I know you’ve been having a rough time, I just… wanted to check in on you.” It wasn’t even a lie, it was just… not the entire truth. Trick raised an eyebrow that somehow managed to perfectly capture her fatigue and challenged her mother’s expression of utter bemusement. 

 

“I’m… yeah, I’m fine, Weasel, why… what are you  _ wearing _ ?” She was grateful she wasn’t the one here that blushed easily, merely pulling her zip-up hoodie tighter around herself in a measly attempt to hide what the Stumph’s deemed a horrendous outfit. Petra decided not even attempt to answer the question.

 

“Uhm… I know it’s late, but… if you want, i’ve brought… snacks, we could, dunno… go just chill by the lake or… whatever?” Damn, Cusack made this look way easier than it was. 

 

“It’s f- something like 10 at night, dude, I’m not going out with you!” Petra pouted, cocked her head a bit to enhance the puppy-dog effect. It worked just fine on dinner ladies, the odd teacher, teenage boys, but Trick, the snitch, had had five years of immunising herself against Petra’s pity tactics. 

 

“No, man, it’s late, I need my beauty sleep!” 

 

“You never go to sleep before 3am, stop lying to yourself.”

 

“Yeah well I never leave the house after 8 either, yet here we are, on my driveway.” 

 

“Technically it’s your mom’s driveway…”

 

“Technically you’re trespassing so get the fuck out of here before I pull a rifle on you.”

 

“Patricia! Language!” Trick sneered in the faint direction of her mother’s voice, who, despite her talent for never letting anything slip past her attention, hadn’t yet perfected the art of scanning through people’s skulls in order to read their facial expressions, much to her daughter’s immediate luck. 

 

Petra, knowing when she was - annoyingly - beaten, sighed heavily, flashing her big-brown eyes in a final, futile attempt before shrugging it off. “Let me come in at least?” Trick rolled her eyes, but didn’t protest as Petra followed her inside and upstairs to her small bedroom facing the street at the front. She was sandwiched between Kady and Martin, both older than her, both considerably more social, Petra bumped into them surprisingly frequently when she was snuck into bars by Chris’ older brother Leo. She realised she’d forgotten the boom box with the 80s mixtape on the backseat of her- her dad’s car once they’d settled down on Trick’s bed, Trick wrapped up in her duvet, leaning against the headboard, Petra awkwardly perched on the foot-end. 

 

“So?” Trick prompted after a few minutes of unbearable silence.

 

“So what?” Her John Cusack scenario hadn’t quite worked out and by that she meant she wished she’d stayed the fuck at home and never even touched Say Anything. Fucking Hollywood, wasn’t helping her out of her unbearably shameful situation. She tried not to put too much thought into how much of a dumbass she must appear to be. 

 

Trick rolled her eyes dramatically and slumped down into her pillows. “So what are you doing outside my house in the middle of the night?” 

 

“Uh… dunno. Seeing how you were. I guess.”   
  


“I do own a fucking phone, you know, like, texts are a thing, dude.” 

 

“Not as romantic.” Trick scoffed and shoved her socked foot in Petra’s mouth, only shyly avoiding removing all eight of her front teeth. Petra spluttered and smacked at Trick’s leg, surprised rather than disgusted. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t had weirder shit touch her tongue. 

 

“Hey, be glad I forgot the boom box, dude.” 

 

“The boom box? You brought a fucking boom box?” Petra shrugged.

 

“And a mixtape. 80s hits, y’know, your sort of shit.” Trick didn’t look all too impressed at Petra’s efforts at being a halfway decent, if over-compensating, friend.

 

“Okay, what do you think is my sort of shit, then?” 

 

“Y’know, Spandau Ballet and stuff…”

 

“Spandau Ballet?” Petra became aware of the threat when Trick heaved herself up out of her comfortable sausage position to look her square in the face, enraged as though she’d just murdered her budgie, “Spandau fucking Ballet? Are you serious?!” 

 

Personally, Petra didn’t know what the problem with the timeless classic  _ True _ was, but somehow, Spandau Ballet seemed to have struck a particular nerve with little Trick.

 

“Or… not Spandau Ballet?” she pleaded in an attempt to keep her head on the shoulders and relatively unharmed. “A-ha?” 

 

“A-ha? That’s the best you can come up with?” 

 

“I dunno, man, Take On Me is a pretty solihnnnggg” she never did get to finish her sentence as Trick tackled her, knocking her over onto her back, the wooden frame of the bed cracking against her spine.

 

“I’ll give you a-ha! A-ha me this!” In the same way Trick had become immune to Petra’s begging, Petra had become used to Trick’s little outbreaks. Mostly harmless, she had the physical strength of a dormouse, but if she put her weight behind it, her punches almost hurt. Petra, however, knew how to dodge them, five years of fists and elbows aimed at her gut polishing her reflexes until she could catch Trick’s arm before it could even dream of inflicting any damage. 

 

“Hey, stop!” Petra flipped her over, nothing but revenge on her mind. “Stop,  _ stop _ !!” Trick wriggled helplessly under Petra’s fingers as she picked out the spots she knew tortured her the most - under her arms, the side of her stomach, the insides of her knees, she tickled them mercilessly, drinking in Trick’s howls and pleas as she  _ begged _ her to stop. 

 

“Stop, stop! I yield! Yield!” Tears in her eyes, Trick slumped back, still flinching under her touch for fear of the torture being resumed any second. Teasingly, Petra touched her fingers to her stomach and Trick violently winced away from her, shooting her a warning glare before bursting into laughter. 

 

“Fuck, you, seriously. I hate you.” 

“Aw Trick, you’re breaking my heart here…”

 

“Go fuck yourself.” 

 

“Please give me one more night, give me just one more night.”

 

“Are you singing Phil Collins at me?” Petra shrugged.

 

“Seemed fitting…” 

 

“You’re fucking tone deaf, I swear to god.”   
  


“We can’t all have the voice of an Angel, Pattycakes.” The nickname warranted a punch to the stomach and honestly? Petra couldn’t even argue about it. 

 

“Shut the fuck up and spoon me, I’m cold and tired.” Petra thanked the gods she didn’t have a treacherous penis as she scooted up close behind Trick, wrapping her arms around her soft, warm torso and pulling her close until they were pressed closely together. A small smile toyed at the corners of her mouth as she closed her eyes, concentrating on Trick’s breathing, on her body heat, on her smell - sweet, creamy, unexpected considering how sweaty she was. In fact, she was so sweaty, she’d complain about it often and vocally. 

 

“Okay, maybe not quite so close, I’m a sweaty gal and you’re hot.” Petra smirked against the back of her neck.

 

“Why, thank you.”

 

“Fuck right on off.” Petra - because she was the human embodiment of Eris - only pulled Trick even tighter until she was met with a pal in her face, forcefully pushing her away. 

 

“Jesus Christ, can you just.... You know what, never mind, your own damned fault if you wake up in a puddle tomorrow.” 

 

“Kinky.”

 

“Shut the fuck up and let me sleep you complete rat.” 

 

The smile was still on Petra’s lips the next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my tumblr is scmi_sweet in case you wanna send me anon hate or become my friend

**Author's Note:**

> i usually ask for comments and kudos but honestly, this is so mediocre...... my tumblr is scmi-sweet so feel free to tell me how bad I am at writing instead


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